A Vision of Light Read online

  WHEN BROTHER GREGORY RETURNED the following week, he brought with him a wax tablet and stylus, as well as a little board with all of the letters of the alphabet carved upon it.

  “I must see these!” cried Margaret.

  “Not until we have finished the chapter,” said Brother Gregory. “Or perhaps this is where you wanted to end your book?”

  “No, no, I have to explain what happened after, and how we were saved from starvation in winter, and many other happenings after that as well!” Margaret exclaimed eagerly.

  “I thought that might well be the case,” Brother Gregory observed dryly.

  And so he took his place at the table, and set out his inkhorn and knife for sharpening quills, and began to write.

  MOTHER HILDE WAS A very practical woman, and never let brooding about things that could not be undone interfere with the business at hand. As soon as she saw me up and about, she began to look about and calculate how best we might gather and store for the winter. It was the loss of her sons that had made things so much more difficult. Peter could not be trusted with anything sharp, let alone a scythe, and I was too frail to be of much use. Still, we reaped as best we could, and stored the grain in stacks still on the stalk.

  “Too little, too little,” Hilde would mutter, and shake her head, when she checked over our stores of grain and beans. “And not a beast to plow.” Yet mutter as she would, I was in such a strange state I could not bring myself to care. For the world I observed was glowing with colors; each object, no matter how humble, was surrounded by a sort of shimmering outline, and I looked everywhere with wonder, like a newborn baby. And like a baby I was completely indifferent to my fate. As long as I ate today, who cared for tomorrow? All was so enchanting, how could anything be bad? And so I stayed in a state of complete joy and indifference for several weeks after my vision. I was content to dwell on the new idea that had come to me that all things and states were just varieties of light, and that in every form, light was the emanation and manifestation of God. I felt surrounded and permeated by the universe, unsure where it began and I ended. And so I sat in my enchanted world in a kind of uncaring delight, often, I suspect, to the irritation of my good friend, who wanted a companion in her worries.

  In this strange season two curious things happened. First, my hair, which had fallen out in great clumps during and after my illness, began to regrow. Hilde had advised cutting it off short above the shoulder, so that it could grow all new. Clip, clip, clip, with the sheep shears, and three and a half feet of dead, straight hair had fallen to the ground. Now it was regrowing, not straight, but curling, with a strange shine beneath the true color.

  Then one day, as I sat out-of-doors, working and admiring my new hair, I noticed an even odder thing in the garden. Above my favorite seat the branches of the apple tree, denuded of their summer’s fruit, were preparing for the barren winter season. Or were they? As I looked, I saw along the twigs a strange sight. A dozen—no, a score or more—white, sweet-scented apple blossoms! I’d never heard of such a thing. Could it be a Sign? I sat down under the tree to think about it a moment.

  “Yes, a Sign.” I heard a soft, buzzing voice weaving in and out among the blossoms, like a bee hunting for nectar. “You seemed a little slow about the first one,” the voice went on. I looked up, but I couldn’t see anything. “Nice, isn’t it? I thought you’d like it.” It’s best to be polite, I thought.

  “It’s for me? It’s very lovely. But I don’t understand—”

  “So now you want explanations too? Most people are happy enough with just one Sign. You shouldn’t try Me, Margaret. Besides, even if I explained, you couldn’t understand. It’s usually that way with you people.”

  “I could, I could, if you explained it right. I know I’m not learned, but if you’d say it simply—”

  But the air above the apple tree was still.

  My odd behavior did not escape the sharp eyes of Mother Hilde, who began to say to herself, “Well, who knows? Stranger things have happened. Perhaps God will carry us through this season. Certainly we alone would fail.” Then one evening, as she dished out supper from the pot, she observed, “Margaret, I would not have lived to be so old if I were not clever. Why, I have seen over fifty summers! And I know a trick or two, I’ll tell you. But I have also been lucky, and it is luck we are waiting for now.”

  “What kind of luck, Mother Hilde?”

  “We cannot last the winter here, unless it is unseasonably mild. And yet it has come to me that everybody in the world may not be dead. If they are not, will they not have babies? Or need a poultice or a healing ointment? And if they do, why would they not seek out old Hilde, who in all the countryside is known as the wisest in these arts? Therefore I intend to worry no more, for Dame Fortune is as likely to knock on our door as Lord Starvation.” I have learned many times since, that when an idea comes upon Hilde like that, it is best to listen, for her prophecies have a way of coming true.

  When the first cold winds blew away the leaves, and autumn rains made the tracks to field and village into deep channels of mud, we settled indoors to wait for Hilde’s Lady Fortune. Yet though we now felt more alone than ever, we did not waste time. While Peter stirred the kettle, we ground meal or spun, traded tales and ballads, and Hilde taught me more about her herbs and their uses. She had determined that, God willing, we should reenter the living world as partners in midwifery and healing, for together we might do much more along these lines than singly. As she put it while she was grinding a concoction of herbs with a mortar and pestle one day, “If all the world is not dead, then you’ll be needing a trade, Margaret. And I’m growing too old to work alone. So you must admit, the plan’s ideal.”

  The idea seemed like a good one, but it terrified me. How can a woman live without a man to support her? I didn’t know anything. How could I ever know enough? I wasn’t old and wise, like Mother Hilde. And winter was coming. It all preyed on my mind. One day, when I had taken Moll out under the stormy sky to gather fallen wood, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. It was all pushing up inside me, making my throat hurt. So I shouted up to the scudding clouds, to no one in particular, “I can’t do it! I just can’t!”

  Then my stomach hurt, and a quiet voice inside my ear said, “Of course you can.”

  “Are you my mind, or a Voice?” I asked suddenly.

  “You haven’t learned anything yet, have you? Don’t you know My hand sustains you?”

  I began to shiver in the chilly wind, and wrapped my cloak tighter. Then—I just couldn’t help it—I said, “You—have a hand?”

  “Only in a manner of speaking. I thought you’d understand it better that way.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “You ought to be. You’re very troublesome, for a woman.”

  “For a woman—? Are You a man, then, after all?”

  “I am what people expect Me to be. It’s all they are capable of comprehending. After all, doesn’t it surprise you that I’m speaking in English instead of Latin?”

  “But I don’t know any Latin.”

  “Exactly.”

  I thought about it. It still didn’t make much sense. I was going to ask another question when the Voice said, “Think more and talk less, Margaret. I’ll give you a good long time to figure it all out.”

  The wretched Voice hadn’t helped a bit. It had just mixed up things more. And on top of all that, Moll had decided not to move. The wind tugged at my cloak and tore it loose so that it billowed behind me as I turned to face her with fury in my eye. I braced my feet and hauled at her halter and shouted: “You ungrateful she-ass! I will do it! And what’s more, you’re bringing every bit of that wood home! Now!” And as the distant thunder rumbled and the first big drops fell on my face, Moll looked at me with that innocent stare donkeys sometimes have. Then she put her right forefoot forward and delicately tried the ground, and began to walk, as if she had intended to all along.

  So I worked very diligently to learn the new art, and all
my doubts were replaced by admiration for Mother Hilde’s wonderful skill. “See this?” she’d say, holding up something dark and ugly. “That’s a mandrake root, and if you don’t pick it just right, it won’t work at all.” Or she’d point to a shapeless bunch of dried weeds hanging from the roof: “Here is yarrow for stanching wounds. And what’s this one, Margaret?”

  “That’s foxglove, Mother Hilde, but what’s it any good for?”

  “For reducing swelling in the ankles, but it has to be used very carefully, if you don’t want to poison anyone.” And so she’d hold up bunches of this and that, having me smell and feel, so I wouldn’t make any mistakes: shepherd’s purse for fluxes; boneset, so called for its merit in healing broken bones; sage, to prevent melancholy; and wood betony, which keeps off the Devil. We ventured out in the dark of the moon to dig roots, we dried and crushed plants into powder, and I learned how to make balms and ointments. Hilde always grew content among her plants; she loved all the things that grow on the earth, and I think maybe they knew it. I’ve never known a person who could grow better cabbages, for example. And my quickness in learning from her pleased her, and occupied her mind, so she gradually ceased to worry about who would bury her and planned to go on living instead. Sometimes Hilde would tell me of difficult childbirths she had attended, freaks of nature, of desperate women who went mad after an unwanted birth, and tales of ghostly babes who returned to haunt the houses where they had died while being born. Her wisdom seemed as wide as the sky to me.

  It was a sign of my complete faith in her intuition that I was not surprised in the least when, after the first light snowfall, we heard the sound of horses in the distance and knew that we were found—and saved. Two armed servingmen, mounted on saddle horses and leading a mule with an empty saddle, shouted at our door, “Who’s home? We’ve seen your fire. We are sent for Hilde, the midwife, if she still lives.”

  “I am Hilde, goodmen,” she answered. “Dismount and come inside—you needn’t worry, we are all well in this house.”

  “Many thanks,” said the elder of the two, a dark, bearded, heavyset man. “But we can’t stay long, for our mistress’s time is upon her, and we dare not be late.”

  “Still, you might want a bit to eat while I pack my necessaries,” answered Hilde. “Have you ridden far?”

  “A day and a half’s hard ride from Monchensie, with barely a stop for a dry cake and ale, goodwife.”

  “So far? I’ve heard of the place. Is it Lady Blanche who has sent for me? I once knew a very good midwife much closer than here. Has Goodwife Alice died of the pestilence too?”

  “Old Mother Alice is alive, all right, but Lady Blanche won’t have her attend. She has a flaming mark on the skin of her arms which festers and peels. She’s been banished for fear that she carries a curse that will harm the child.”

  “It sounds, perhaps, like Saint Anthony’s fire,” said Hilde, shaking her head. “This is a great pity indeed, for Goodwife Alice is very skilled, and I have heard that Lady Blanche has great difficulties in childbed.”

  “Still, she must have you, and without delay,” said the younger of the two, looking askance at Hilde’s activities. For she had not been idle as she spoke. Her she-ass, which, with the cat and chickens, was kept in the house in this season, had been quickly covered with folded bed blankets and a pair of great panniers. Whirling about the house she loaded her little chest and goods. Pop, pop, pop! She broke the strings that suspended her dried herbs from the roof, and rolled them in a long cloth, and loaded them too. Seeing what she wished, I caught her old mouser and tied him in a basket, as she caught her three remaining chickens.

  “Why pack this ass when we have a fast mule?” the old man asked nervously.

  “The mule must carry Margaret and me, while Peter must ride double with you. So the ass is necessary for my tools.”

  “All these folks go too? We were sent for only one.”

  “Why, Margaret is my assistant, and as you can see, she has exceptionally slender, long hands, which are very essential for difficult birth.” Clever, clever Hilde! With her glib tongue she would bring us all to safety.

  “I will ride double with the young one,” leered the younger man, “but not with that ugly idiot.”

  “Young man, he is no idiot, but a fairy changeling. The fairies grant boons to those who treat him well.” The young man looked unbelieving, while the older fidgeted.

  “No chickens and cat, we can make no speed with so many baskets laden on the ass,” said the elder sternly.

  “Why, the best hen is for yourself, dear friend, in reward for your care for us,” said Hilde blandly, continuing, “The second is for Goodwife Alice, who fares so badly. Who are we to deny Christian charity? The last is to procure eggs for Margaret here, who is still recovering her strength. See how pale she is? Surely the basket is very light.”

  “But no cat.”

  “I cannot sleep with rats,” she answered simply.

  “You stubborn old hag, you’d sleep with the Devil himself if I were free to use this on you,” stormed the younger, drawing his short sword impatiently.

  “And how, may I ask, should a corpse deliver a baby?” she answered calmly. “Force is not the answer to all things,” she went on, “and especially in dealing with women, you must remember that ‘you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.’ Besides, we are all loaded, you see? And you have had something to eat as well.” She emptied the pot, loaded it with the day’s baking, and tied it between the baskets, where the blanket could contain the last remaining heat. Leading her she-ass out of the house she tied its halter to the mule’s saddlebow. Thus laden, and heavily wrapped against the cold, we set off into the long shadows of the afternoon.

  THE CHAPTER WAS NOW done, and Brother Gregory put away his writing things and took out the tablet, in order to begin the reading instruction. He was an excellent teacher in the classic style. He began by teaching Margaret the letters of the alphabet, which he aided her to memorize by first having her run the stylus in the grooves of the carved letters on the wooden tablet, and then repeat the strokes on the wax tablet, reciting the name of the letter as she completed each pattern. When he had first set the wood and wax tablets before her, he couldn’t help noticing Margaret’s hands. They were trembling with anticipation, although she had kept strict control over the expression on her face. She was quick, very quick, and by the time Brother Gregory had finished the first lesson, she had mastered almost all the alphabet. He left her printing it over and over again, reciting aloud as her wobbly letters in wax followed the form on the model tablet.

  Strange, strange, thought Brother Gregory to himself. He shook his head. He had never before taught without a rod in his hand.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK A SERVINGWOMAN showed Brother Gregory to the lesson room wordlessly, her face a study in worry. Peeping inside the half-open door he thought he discerned the reason for her silent disapproval. At the writing table a pretty sight met his eyes. Margaret bent over her new wax tablet, deeply absorbed. On each side of their mother two equally absorbed little red heads bent over their joint work.

  “This one is A; it is drawn like a little house.” Beside the first clumsy A, two wildly wobbly replicas were placed in their turn.

  “Here is B; what do you think it looks like?”

  “A fat man, I think,” said the elder, cocking her curly head on one side.

  “I think it looks beautiful, mama, you made it beautiful,” said little Alison, ever agreeable.

  Brother Gregory waited until the B’s were in place and interrupted in a sharp tone, “Well, madame, are you raising up sedition among the female sex? Or perhaps two little nuns?”

  “Oh!” Margaret whirled around, shocked, only to meet the amused glitter in his dark, saturnine eyes.

  “Why, I am doing neither. Look how clever my babies are!” She exhibited the tablet proudly. “Think how fortunate they will be, to read and write all their lives!”


  Brother Gregory broke off the enthusiastic speech he knew would follow. “The better to receive letters from lovers in secret, and plan deceits! If learned women are like talking dogs, unnatural and useless, then ponder on how much more greatly perverse is the spectacle of learned girl-children.”

  But Margaret could tell from the tone of his voice that he was not altogether as sour as his speech. She knew that his tender spot was his love of learning and teaching, and what teacher is not pleased to see his work bearing unexpected fruit? So she looked on his mock-scornful face with a quiet smile. Letting the matter drop she summoned the nurse to remove her girls, although not without much disappointed clamor on their part.

  Brother Gregory watched their departure with a strangely sad expression. He could not help noticing how the little girls had wept when the letters were taken away. In the schoolroom the only crying the boys did was during the master’s beatings. These little girls actually wanted the lessons.

  Perhaps she’s right. Maybe the rod is a bad master, he mused to himself. But he kept his silence, because it was outrageous for a man of learning to entertain such a thought.

  MONCHENSIE AND ITS VILLAGE had avoided the plague by a very simple expedient. When Sir Raymond had heard that the disease had stricken two families in his demesne, he had simply had them sealed up alive in their infected houses. While the carpenters were finishing nailing the doors and shutters fast, he had ridden by on his tall chestnut palfrey to inspect their work (albeit from a safe distance), and announced that anyone else who had the temerity to get the disease would be treated in exactly the same way. With the plague stopped at his doors the lord of Monchensie continued his daily round of business and hunting exactly as before. He did not like having his routine disturbed, and besides, he believed that nature should shape itself to his will, rather than the other way around. In only one respect had he been unsuccessful in imposing his demands on nature: his wife had got him no living male heir. It was at this point that fate brought us to attend the childbed of Lady Blanche.